


Ain't No Saint

by zimniy_soldat



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Drug Use, Drug Withdrawal, Gen, Identity Issues, M/M, Memory Loss, Minor Violence, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 03:24:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8429980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zimniy_soldat/pseuds/zimniy_soldat
Summary: “I was jealous of your warmth so I ripped out your jugular. Your blood felt so real, felt so sinful,” Bucky hisses as dusk fell upon the city.
   Small drabble about the Winter Soldier finding the man from his dreams, nightmares, and memories, in an attempt to learn who he was, who he is, and who he is going to be.





	

**Author's Note:**

> just a strange lil fic about post-tws bucky. it’s definitely not canon-compliant, and i’ve been having some sort of memory problem where remembering information is difficult, so, sorry if there are discrepancies or just straight up wrong shit. i also have no idea how heroin works pls forgive me
> 
> this is definitely not the right way to go about any of this, but i don't think bucky would be very good at discerning what is good for him and what is potentially toxic. i definitely don't think steve should automatically trust bucky but i'm a sucker for that trope *shrugs*

The shaking had begun after the Soldier pulled Captain America from the Potomac. He thought it was from the cold, so he ran, far as he could, deeper and deeper into the underbelly of the city. He found shelter, traded his torn tactical gear for worn clothes. Resetting his shoulder was grueling, but he got it done and quickly bundled up.

The shaking didn’t stop, it plagued him like a ghost with a grudge, for two weeks.

The Soldier was now wandering aimlessly through an abandoned subway station-turned homeless shelter, violently shaking. He attracts attention with each tent he passes, as his breathing becomes labored and heavy. So many eyes, so many vulnerabilities, he needs to get out, out, out.

He stumbles, doesn’t bother to break his fall, and then he is emptying his stomach on the dirty concrete. Concerned, a man with mismatched shoes touches the Soldier’s shoulder.

He jerks away, screaming. “Don’t! I don’t want to hurt you!”

The man lifts him up, letting him weakly try to fight, and speaks in a tone usually reserved for small, fragile animals. “Don’t worry, I can help.”

The Soldier’s body becomes limp, and he allows himself to be pulled to the man’s tent, where he lies down on scratchy blankets and is offered a small cup of water. He sips it, trying to rinse out the taste of bile.

Grabbing various materials from a backpack, the man motions for the Soldier to remove his jacket. Reluctant, he shakily shrugs it off his right side, leaving the deadly arm covered. As the man ties a piece of rubber tightly around his bicep, he introduces himself.

“Name’s Rory. What’s yours, fella?” He prepares a spoon with cotton and some sort of resin. The Soldier doesn’t pay much attention to it as the man holds a lighter underneath it and fills a syringe with the liquid it produces.

The Soldier shakes, sifts through his limited memories, trying to find a name. It is a whisper, a vocal memory, that he repeats to Rory.

“My name’s Steve..”

The man nods before pushing the needle into Steve’s vein. As the plunger is depressed, Steve gasps. It rushes through his veins with a familiar warmth. The needle is removed, and Rory pulls the Soldier to lay on his side. The shaking gradually subsides and is replaced with a sluggish feeling. His eyelids droop, and he looks at Rory with a mix of relief and fear. He knows this sensation.

It’s the medicine the Soviets gave him. It’s the reward for a successful mission with Hydra.

“The Asset is ready for maintenance, Sir,” he speaks monotonously. Rory cocks his head, at a loss for words.

The Soldier reaches his gloved, covered metal arm out to the man. “Reporting a malfunction, Sir, wires exposed.”

Curious, Rory pulls the jacket the rest of the way off, and is shocked to discover a metal appendage. He can see where a section of the arm was sliced into, where the wires are partially torn. Just as Rory reaches for the damaged area, the arm shorts out and falls, limp, to the blanket. The dead-weight of it wrenches the Soldier’s shoulder forward, and he chokes down a scream. His eyes are swimming, he knows he has to finish the report before the medicine takes full effect.

“The Asset is not functioning properly, requiring full reset a-” the words cut off as Steve’s exhaustion catches up to him. He lets out a sigh and finally succumbs to the drug’s effects.

Rory gingerly pokes the unconscious man’s face, trying to assess whether or not he’s dead. The strange man has attracted a small crowd of onlookers at the tent’s entrance, and Rory stumbles to his feet to shut the flap. He walks back to Steve, tries to lift the arm, only for it to weigh what feels like a ton. It barely budges, and when he does lift it off the ground, it sends a jolt of electricity to Steve.

His body twitches, but does not rouse. Rory sets the arm back down and prepares to stand watch over the man.

*

Waking is like swimming in the ocean at nightfall, and the Soldier struggles. He breaks the surface and gasps, sits up quickly, he can only see darkness. He can’t move his left arm, and the panic sets in. The only sound that escapes are small whimpers between the panting.

Sudden, blinding light shocks him into trying to scramble backwards.

“Steve! Steve, calm down, it’s me!” A voice behind the light, a lantern, he’s in a tent, he’s underground, with Rory.

He stops, swallows, and croaks out, “May I have water?”

The lantern is set down and a cup is handed to him, but when he tries to lift his arm, it doesn’t respond. Steve stares in disbelief before reaching with his flesh arm. The water is gulped down.

Seriousness steels his features. “Rory, status report,” his eyes glint dangerously in the light, and fear shoots through the homeless man.

“Dude, I gave you a hit and you started talking weird, then your arm died and you passed out,” Rory spoke quickly, hands up in a defensive gesture. “Steve, man, what the hell is up with you?”

The Soldier continues to stare, silent and brooding, until he suddenly vomits in his own lap. Tears stream down his face, and he looks at Rory with the most pathetic, sad expression. The man swears before grabbing some stained towels and approaching Steve.

“When was the last time you even ate, dude?” Rory scrunches his nose as he tries to clean Steve up.

He seems to be pondering the question until Steve finally croaks out an answer. “Non-supplemental substances have a bad reaction with me.” It only confuses Rory further.

“So, you’re saying you’ve been throwing up everything you eat?” A nod.

“What can you eat?” A shrug.

The Soldier speaks with a vacant look to his eyes. “The last tube-feeding was given after system reboot, approximately two weeks ago.” Rory stops trying to clean up the bile and instead stares, wide-eyed, at the enigma before him.

“You were fed through a goddamn tube? What the hell are you?” Rory backs away slightly, and the Soldier picks up on it like a predator scenting weakness.

His flesh hand reaches for the knife in his waistband. “Insufficient clearance level for classified information.”

He freezes, the knife is missing. Steve frantically looks around while Rory frantically tries to figure out how to calm his guest down.

“No biggie, man, I don’t need to know your tragic back-story.” Rory offers, heart still beating swiftly. “Let’s just get you cleaned up, then we can figure out what to feed you.”

The Soldier relaxes, though his head and right shoulder twitch minutely. ‘Assess the situation, find a weapon, eliminate any threats’, his memory reminds him. Steve nods, and allows Rory to tug him to a standing position. His shirt is removed with a struggle, as the dead weight of the arm proves to be a hindrance to Steve’s movement. Rory shuffles around a pile of clothing and picks out the nicest sweater he has. It only bears a few stains and tears, but he isn’t too attached to it.

As Steve is pulling the sweater on, Rory looks at the deep scars littering the man’s body. The raised, red flesh at the shoulder of his metal arm is the most angry looking, and he can’t help but blush and look away in embarrassment when Steve’s eyes catch him in the act of staring. He didn’t need to know the stories, he knew a soldier when he saw one.

“Which war did you serve in?” Rory speaks casually as he tries to find a pair of pants that would fit Steve (‘The guy has massive thighs..’).

Steve is quiet for a long minute, and Rory's sure he isn’t going to get an answer, before the rugged man speaks up. “The Cold War is the first that comes to mind.”

Having found a pair of black sweatpants that would fit his guest, Rory turns around. Laughter bubbles out of his throat, but it dies down when he sees Steve’s face.

“You’re dead fucking serious?” Rory hands the pants over.

“As serious as a body in a morgue.” The tic of Steve’s head betrays the immensely creepy look on his face, but a smile spreads his chapped lips. “Everything is a flurry of red and white, and I can’t remember much else.”

He grows quiet once more, and Rory sees a glimpse of sadness in the man’s eyes before he ducks to change his pants. Steve is surprisingly talented at untying and re-doing his laces one-handed. Rory wonders how long he's had the metal prosthetic. Rory gingerly grabs the soiled clothes and opens the tent’s entrance. He announces that he’d be back, and was satisfied to see Steve settle back down on the makeshift bed. Rory tosses the garments in the barrel-fire, no use in trying to clean them. They looked as if they had been dragged through the street for a month.

When Rory returns, he finds Steve fast asleep on the stack of blankets. He scoops up the scraps of paper he had gathered and begins sketching the slumbering form in front of him. While the guy creeps him out with his strange mannerisms, erratic behavior, and morbid sense of humor, Rory does hold a deep respect for him. He’s been through hell, that much is evident, and deserves a goddamn break.

*

He’s unsure whether it’s a memory or a dream, but the warmth he feels makes him never want it to end. Sunspots dance over his vision, so all he sees are fragments, pieces of the whole picture. There’s a bright and skinny boy smiling at him, reaching his hand out, before suddenly, the scene changes to something dark and horrifying.

He sees that bright smile marred with blood, he can hear the choked breaths of a man dying. He sees the arm made of metal wrapped around his throat, right where the pulse point radiates warmth. It’s pounding harder and harsher with each click of increasing tension in the fingers. The Soldier hears capillaries pop and sees the blood blooming under the pale flesh across that perfect throat.

The skies clear and the man’s striking blue eyes are staring at him with intensity, with… trust?

In one swift movement, the hand is removed and the Soldier’s teeth latch onto the man’s pulse, where the blood is thrumming with life and warmth and the Soldier has to taint, destroy, kill.

He hears a scream, “Bucky,” distant and distorted, as if someone is falling. The Soldier’s teeth rip the man’s jugular from his throat and he bathes in the man’s blood, in the dying warmth of his sunshine. The Soldier cries; for the loss, for the victory.

The Soldier gasps quietly as he is thrust from the dream-memory-nightmare and into reality. The shaking has returned, and he looks around for his newfound companion. Rory is sleeping, with his chin on his chest, and papers strewn across his lap. Steve winces, wonders if he should wake him, before he glances at the papers. He reaches for the closest one, shivering.

It’s him, asleep, long and dirty hair strewn across his face, and Steve recoils. He crawls closer to Rory and looks at each one. They’re all images of himself, frozen in various stages of sleep, and he drops them with a gasp. The sharp sound rouses Rory, and the man groggily lifts his head as Steve brings his flesh hand to his own face.

“Is that what I look like?” Tears wet his eyes, and he stares Rory down, expecting an answer.

A nod is enough for him, and Steve steels his features.

The Soldier’s suddenly in Rory’s face, seriousness and determination emanating from his very core. “I need help to locate a man. Blonde, blue eyes, strong, possibly named Bucky.” He nods, or at least Rory thinks it’s a nod. It’s probably a tic.

Rory stammers out his affirmation, and releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding when Steve backs away. He watches as the man struggles to pull his jacket back on. Steve growls when Rory reaches out to help, so instead, Rory begins gathering the necessary supplies. He can trust his neighbor, a sweet old lady named Martha, to watch over his tent in his absence. When Rory turns around, he jumps with a choked-off shriek. Steve moves so quietly that Rory hadn’t noticed him.

“Please put my left hand into the jacket pocket,” Steve sounds almost bashful. “I can’t reach it myself.”

Rory does as the scary man asks, and is out of breath by the time the task is done. As they leave, he grumbles about the sheer weight of it to himself. They take the most direct route to the public library.

*

“Okay, so that was a bust,” Rory leans back in the seat and crosses his arms in exasperation. “Googling ‘strong blonde man’ finds us nothing but porn.”

Steve frowns. “I don’t know what that means.”

At Rory’s scandalous gasp, Steve clarifies with one word, “Googling.”

They quietly snicker before turning back to the computer. Rory asks him if he remembers anything else about the man. Steve thinks for a long moment, before something itches at the back of his brain.

“Try the same thing, but with the name ‘Steve’.” The Soldier, ignoring the strange look from Rory and his whisper of “I thought your name was Steve”, concentrates on the wavy screen. The search window is immediately covered in photographs and news headlines about a man called Captain America. The Soldier’s brow furrows and he takes the mouse from Rory to click on a headshot of the man.

Warmth floods his body, and the shaking worsens. He lets it out in one breath, “It’s him and that’s not my name and I tried to kill him and I need him.”

He tics violently, jerking the mouse to the side. His finger reflexively presses down, which opens an article about the rumored residence of one Steve Rogers. The Soldier scrolls through until an address looks familiar, an apartment in Brooklyn. His mind inputs the address and, like the flick of a light switch, he stands and runs for the door. A man on a mission.

Rory looks from the monitor to the door and back again, reads the address where the cursor rests, and realization dawns on him. He speed-walks to the entrance. He does not make eye contact with the disgruntled librarian. When the sunlight kisses his skin and the noise of the city greets him, Rory almost feels lost.

He’s heard the stories, he’s heard the rumors. Steve Rogers had a best friend who died during the war.

Shit, Rory gave Steve Rogers’ best friend, Bucky Barnes, a shot of heroin.

He needs to make it to that address before his friend passes out, or worse, murders Captain America.

*

Steve found that listening to old records (though they aren’t very old to him) and reading new novels calms him down significantly. He gets lost so easily in these books, in the fantastic worlds their authors create single-handedly. That’s his excuse for being completely and totally unprepared for his door being kicked down and a man rushing in in broad daylight.

Steve jumps and throws the hardcover at the intruder. It’s swatted from the air before it can make facial contact and cause damage.

“Fuck!” a voice resounds from behind the man, and the two intruders are shadowed in the poorly-lit doorway. One of them steps forward, but Steve had already bolted to his bedroom for the shield. The Captain turns around, muscles preparing to launch the shield at bone-breaking speed, and promptly drops it to the carpet with a muffled clang.

The Winter Soldier is in the doorway of his bedroom, and he looks like shit. Dark circles and stubble barely disguise the gauntness of his cheeks. Hell, his best friend is alive, and shaking, and twitching, and.. Why isn’t he using his left arm? Why hasn’t he moved in for the kill? Steve steps toward Bucky, wary of any movement.

“I- I need you to tell me who I am,” the man’s voice scratches from his throat as tears threaten to fall. He takes a single step and collapses.

Steve rushes forward, becoming increasingly worried as Bucky had tried to catch himself with his right arm, while his left remained motionless. Steve glances at the strange man that had joined them, then picks Bucky up effortlessly.

‘Holy shit oh wow Rogers used to be my childhood hero stay calm, soldier, don’t make a fool of yourself.’ Rory straightens and promptly makes a fool of himself. “He threw up on himself and I gave him heroin and he’s weird and wow you’re Captain America.”

Steve apparently (thankfully) hadn’t heard Rory, and is making quick work of Bucky’s clothes while the man lies shivering on the bed. He strips him quickly and efficiently, down to his underclothes. When he is met with no resistance from the metal appendage, he gently asks Bucky about it.

“Arm malfunctioning, complete shutdown, maintenance required,” came the calm response. Steve nods and turns to Rory.

“I don’t know who you are but you helped Bucky, and while I want to wring your neck for doping him up, I am grateful.” The famous disapproving-soldier-of-freedom look is bestowed upon him, and Rory thinks it just might make up for his imminent death by the hands of his childhood hero. Together, they manage to wrangle the duvet from under Bucky and place it on top of him.

The shaking doesn’t stop, and Bucky is vomiting every thirty minutes into a bucket. Every time he tries to speak, the tic silences him, most likely out of embarrassment. Steve’s sympathy, while it is well-meaning, makes Bucky feel worse.

He’s a worthless, pathetic burden.

Rory is asleep in the living room. Steve is returning with a glass of water. Bucky is vulnerable and shaking. His hand catches Steve’s wrist as he moves to leave the bedside.

“I was jealous of your warmth so I ripped out your jugular. Your blood felt so real, felt so sinful,” Bucky hisses as dusk fell upon the city.

Steve turns, places his hands on either side of Bucky's shoulders, and leans over him. His voice is a whisper, a faint sound that could easily be lost in less stagnant air.

“You are the reason for that warmth, Buck, you are the blood that flows through me.” He gently guides Bucky’s face back when he tries to look away from the intense, deep blue eyes of his mission, his fear. Steve can feel the trembling of Bucky’s body and the twitching of his trigger finger. “I need you, and I’m not going to let you go again.”

His shaking becomes more violent, sweat beginning to bead across his forehead. “In the dreams, the nightmares, I’ve killed you a thousand and one times.” The words tumble from his lips. Bucky reaches for Steve’s hand and brings it to his stubble-covered throat. Steve’s fingers squeeze minutely.

“You need to keep the Asset collared,” as Bucky swallows, Steve can feel it through his palm. “I’m scared of my sins.”

Steve slides his hand from Bucky’s throat to his heart, so slowly that he can feel each scar catch and drag on his fingerprints. The man shivers beneath him, head twitching to the side a few times before settling. The heartbeat Steve finds is steady and strong, the same fearless sound he remembers from childhood. Steve, slow as molasses, leans closer to Bucky’s face until his breath ghosts across his chapped lips.

“I ain’t no saint, James Buchanan Barnes.”

Bucky’s eyes flutter closed and he arches upward, seeking the shelter Steve’s lips offer. Steve straightens up and slides his hand from under the covers. He rests it on Bucky’s forehead to feel the heat there. “You’ve got a fever, and you’re going through drug withdrawals. Get some rest.”

As Steve walks out the door, Bucky thinks of busted knuckles, detention, and fiery blue eyes. No memories haunt him, now, as he slumbers in the den of a lion sworn to protect him.

And protect him, Steven Grant Rogers will.

**Author's Note:**

> if you think i need to correct anything (grammar, etc), just tell me in the comments. i don't mind it, and if anything, i encourage it. thanks for reading!


End file.
